Indonesian prosecutors demand death penalty for radical cleric

Jakarta, May 18 : Indonesian public prosecutors on Friday demanded the death penalty for a radical Islamic cleric over his role in terror attacks in 2016 and 2017.

In a televised hearing at a Jakarta court, prosecutor Anita Dewayani demanded the death sentence for Aman Abdurrahman, also known as Oman Rochman, who allegedly co-founded the Islamic State-affiliated Jamaah Ansharut Daulah group. The group has been accused of perpetrating a series of attacks earlier this week, in which 27 people were killed.

The prosecutors accused Rochman of planning an attack on a shopping centre in Jakarta in January 2016, which killed eight, including the four attackers and injured over 20 people.

The cleric is also accused of masterminding two other bombings -- a May 2017 attack on a bus station in the capital in which two suicide bombers blew themselves up and killed three police officers, and the bombing of a church in the Borneo island in November 2016 which killed a two-year old girl.

Meanwhile, security was boosted on Friday morning outside the court with the deployment of more than 100 police officers to foil possible attacks by the group.

There have been a series of JAD-linked bombings since Sunday that killed 27 people and injured more than 50 in the cities of Surabaya and Pekanbaru.

The JAD emerged out of a number of radical groups mentored by Abdurrahman from jail and was classified as a "global terrorist" group by the State Department of the US in January 2017.

The cleric, who has served a number of sentences for terrorist activities and has been put under preventive arrest over the current charges, was in jail at the time of the attacks he is implicated in.